[chad1n]

From Telegram sources: >Pavel Durov faces up to 20 years in prison in France. The trial will take place very soon – sources close to the investigation.

In addition to drug trafficking, he is accused of collaborating with an organized crime group, covering up for pedophiles, fraud and money laundering.

I don't know how reliable this is, but I've seen in 3-4 sources that he's arrested for terrorism, child abuse, drug trafficking (not providing data to prosecutors).

[codedokode]

If he intentionally cooperated with criminals then it is one thing. But if someone posted something illegal, and nobody reported this, then it obviously is not Durov's fault. If you are too lazy to report illegal content then you should arrest yourselves first.

[chucke1992]

Basically as he did not provide access to the encrypted messages and communication in Telegram, they accused him for supporting the criminals. That's all to it.

It is basically the part of the current politics in EU where they are trying to force access to all encrypted traffic across devices.

[squidbeak]

This is incorrect. Channels and their associated chats aren't encrypted and are centrally hosted by Telegram.

[lxgr]

If they were functionally encrypted, how could he possibly provide them?

Since they’re not, this doesn’t seem much different from e.g. an email provider refusing some court access to somebody’s mail archive (i.e. a very bad idea if your executives ever want to set foot in that country).

I’m really having a very hard time finding much sympathy for an operation that kept endangering users by spreading misinformation about its own security model, while at the same time building a jurisdiction-hopping warrant evasion machine to protect data they arguably shouldn’t even have if that security model were accurate.

[mdhb]

Do you have any proof of this whatsoever or are you just making this up?

[evilfred]

just one google away https://www.wired.com/story/the-kremlin-has-entered-the-chat...

[a0123]

Yeah, and do you think France is going to arrest Durov on the Kremlin's request.

Fun fact: the Russian government and high ranking officials are outraged by the arrest and are asking the Russian state to pressure France into releasing him.

It's one google away. Before you blame this one on Russia too.

[evilfred]

huh? I was not suggesting that France is collaborating with Russia lol. sorry for facts getting in your way. Russia already has plenty of blood on its hands from kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children and raping others.

[accfor1comment]

I, for one, have reported heinous illegal content multiple times over a long time span, as well as e-mailing both their support and abuse addresses. I checked back months later, no responses to e-mails and the content was still up. Telegram has how many employees/staff and moderators for about a billion users, many of whom know exactly how exploitable the platform is? Every source I check says Telegram has just around 100 employees. What is criminal is how late this action is.

[aa_is_op]

It is his fault when his site is full of CSAM and he refuses to take it down

[user_7832]

Can’t comment on csam but telegram has and does take down channels/accounts for many reasons including as “light” as copyright infringement.

[aa_is_op]

The fact that it has reporting mechanisms, doesn't it uses them.

There have been govt commissions in the UK, France, the EU, and the Netherlands about getting Telegram to act on their reports.

All of this while Durov is bragging in Russian press that he doesn't need more than 3 moderators.

If you're not aware of what's really happening here, I'd recommend not commenting.

This guy is a legit a-hole. There's bots on Telegram where you enter women's names or social media URLs and you get back if someone ever posted revenge porn about her. Those bots remain online until a journalist covers them. Unless the company is publicly humiliated, no Telegram channel is ever taken down. Telegram has been the go-to platform for hosting malware and stolen data for half a decade. Nothing... NOTHING has ever been taken down even if it's a blatant TOS violation. So yeah, fuck Durov!

[mdhb]

Maybe just wait a moment for things to come out through the natural course of justice rather than getting yourself all worked up here.

The accusations are serious enough that it’s probably reasonable to assume that they have some serious evidence for this and if that is true then this is a good outcome that should be celebrated.

[oarsinsync]

> The accusations are serious enough that it’s probably reasonable to assume that they have some serious evidence for this and if that is true then this is a good outcome that should be celebrated.

Isn’t it equally reasonable to assume the accused is innocent until proven guilty?

[perihelions]

- "probably reasonable to assume"

Presumption of reasonability in political prosecutions doesn't exactly have a great track record.

I remember when the GoF tried to blackmail a Wikipedia admin with prosecution threats, to coerce them to censor Wikipedia entries it didn't want people to read,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ("French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article (wikimedia.fr)")

[anigbrowl]

Presumption of reasonability in political prosecutions

Assumes facts not in evidence.

[mdhb]

I don’t know what anyone is supposed to assume from one story from over a decade ago.

I’m just saying to slow down and wait for details to come out. This thread is turning into a paranoid fever dream based on nothing as far as I can tell.

[nwienert]

You didn’t say to slow down and wait, you made the claim that “something’s probably bad”, quite different.

[phtrivier]

I would be very surprised if the _trial_ was to take place "very soon". (Trials hardly ever take place "very soon" in France.)

However, I could imagine him staying in custody while being investigated for a couple days, then quickly facing some level of judge to decide whether he has to stay in jail or can be released.

Once this is done, don't expect a formal trial until multiple months (and most realistically, at least a year.)

[a0123]

About the custody thing, he's an extremely high flight risk. If the French authorities are serious about his arrest and it's not just a dumb PR move, there is absolutely no chance he's going to be released. Not without 24/7 police surveillance and giving up on all this passports.

[raverbashing]

> I could imagine him staying in custody while being investigated for a couple days, then quickly facing some level of judge to decide whether he has to stay in jail or can be released.

I think the original link mentioned exactly that, and it would be done over the weekend

[qingcharles]

He's a super high flight risk, so I'm thinking the prosecution is going to make a pretty solid case for him staying in pre-trial until trial in a year or two.

He's gonna have a very miserable time. Flying private jet --> watching another man shitting next to you.

[phtrivier]

Well, he'll only have to see them twice a week now [1]: he's been officially charged, then released (under bail), has to check in regularly, and can't leave the country.

I don't know if that counts as "due process" for everyone ?

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/08/28/le-pdg-de-...

[maxo133]

Yes and the DGSE agents visiting every week or so giving him an release offer you can't refuse.

[qingcharles]

The trial will take place soon?

That seems very unlikely. I don't think France has a statutory number of days in their speedy trial right, so even if you demand trial as you walk in the door, for a serious trial of this size, with this many charges, my experience is saying one to two years for trial.

Now, France does have more rights on pre-trial detention, so he might be able to get some sort of bail, but he's an enormously high flight risk, so.. maybe not.

[MichaelZuo]

How often is bail completely denied in France?

[nephanth]

"Bail" (as in you give money instead of being detained) isn't common in France (although it foes exist in French law).

[qingcharles]

I have no specific data, and Europe has slightly better bail rights than most of the USA, but I would think for this list of charges and his flight risk a judge would have qualms or problems denying bail.

[qingcharles]

I meant to type "no qualms"

[alex00]

The extent of the accusations is evidence that all that is made up in order to get access into Telegram. Telegram is too important to the other side in the Ukraine war. If Telegram goes, then the other side is silenced.

[evilfred]

by "other side" you mean "invaders of their sovereign neighbour"

[alex00]

Ukraine is being played in this proxy war. We are dumping them as soon as they are of no use to us. Like many times before.

[whamlastxmas]

Somehow I think Russia is perfectly capable of making a telegram clone

[Oras]

If it is an encrypted service, how would the company censor and tackle these issues? I’m asking from a technical standpoint.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

It is not encrypted by default. By default, everything goes through Telegram servers and can be read there.

[consumer451]

I have always assumed that Telegram was a Russian op. Any doubts I had were resolved by this event. [0]

> Deputy Russian State Duma Speaker Vladislav Davankov said he had sent an appeal to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to seek Durov's release.

> "His arrest may be politically motivated and a tool to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users. This must not be allowed," the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted Davankov as saying.

[0] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/25/telegram-boss-pave...

[codedokode]

Wikipedia says that the same member of Duma was suggesting an idea to abolish homework at schools because his son asked for this when he learned that his father was elected. I would not treat him seriously.

[nullifidian]

"Vladislav Davankov" is a token "liberal". He's supposed to make such statements. Nothing that is uttered by Duma members is worth any consideration -- it's a complete theater.

[codedokode]

Telegram has public and private groups. They probably want to jail him for not pre-moderating every posted message.

[Oras]

That’s my question, if messages are end to end encrypted then the company does not have access to censor, right?

[a0123]

That's how successful Telegram's PR has been. People believe - like you do - that it's end to end encrypted. It's not.

The secret chats presumably are (if you trust Telegram). Secret chats are 1 to 1. So anything outside of those that most people on Telegram access (massive channels and groups, smaller groups, private groups and channels) is NOT encrypted.

[codedokode]

Sorry for whataboutism, but Apple does the same thing. It claims in advertising that all cloud backups are "encrypted", but if you dig deeper, "encrypted" means "encrypted with a key that is stored in the cloud" (see the table in [1]). Apple also (exactly like Telegram) requires you to opt-in for E2E encryption of backups, it is not enabled by default and even in this case contact list backup do not support E2E encryption.

The article claims that "Contacts and calendars are built on industry standards (CalDAV and CardDAV) that do not provide built-in support for end-to-end encryption." but it seems like a weak argument. Nobody actually cares what protocol is used between a device and a cloud.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

[skyyler]

The messages are not end to end encrypted.

There is a feature that can be enabled to create an end-to-end encrypted chat between strictly two users, but most people do not actually use it.

Telegram is largely a social network masquerading as a messaging app. There is a deep network of “channels” that interlink with each other to provide a community for users. None of that is encrypted.

[codedokode]

Messages in groups are not E2E encrypted, especially in public groups where anyone can read them even without joining. However, anyone can report the message to moderators. The public groups are often limited (temporarily removed from search, temporarily or permanently banned) if they do too much violations.

[Gualdrapo]

> However, anyone can report the message to moderators.

Good luck with that. And that's a seriously big issue. Moderators (and "moderators" in Telegram mean an alleged team of people they hire to moderate all content in Telegram - if you report content, the group administrators won't even be notified about that so they can act by themselves first) in most cases won't do absolutely anything.